With the known automatic manufacture of spring interior mattresses, springs manufactured on a spring winding machine are taken off by a transport star with several arms, if desired knotted at the ends and additionally subjected to a heat treatment. At the ends of the arms there are arranged gripper hands which remove the springs from the spring winding machine and hold these rigidly during transport. The springs are transferred from the transport star to a transport belt pair and are introduced by this transport belt pair into a spring interior assembly automatic machine. In the spring interior assembly automatic machine the springs are finally connected to one another with spiral wires to be joined together into a spring interior of a predeterminable size. The springs manufactured on the spring winding machine, without additional measures adjusting the springs, reach the transport belt and thus the spring interior assembly automatic machine aligned more or less equally, i.e. the ends of the wires in the region of the end rings lie in each case more or less at the same location. Furthermore, this means that, for example, the last springs of a row are aligned outwardly and thus penetrate through the mattress material. In order to prevent this, usually the last spring is rotated by 180 about its own axis so that the free ends or the two knots of the ends or knots of the last springs are aligned towards the second to last spring. It is, however, often desirable to arrange the springs in pairs with the knots or spring wire ends lying opposite one another. There are already known various devices for this purpose, i.e. the alternate alignment of the knots. From DE-A1 19542847 with a spring led from the rotary star from a spring winding device, it is known within the transport belt to rotate this spring about its own axis with a suitably designed displacer, until the knots have reached the desired angular position. The displacement is effected by a displacing device which is designed in a manner such that one may only roughly achieve the alignment of the knot which is set once. Another desired alignment may only be effected by exchange of the displacer of the displacing device.
The object of the present invention then lies in providing a device for aligning springs or their end knots or generally the end regions to a predeterminable angular position which may be changed at any time.
This object is achieved by a device with the features of the patent claim 1. Advantageous formations are defined in the dependent claims.